


ghostie girl

by spoke



Category: Wayward Children Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 11:43:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11873655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke
Summary: It wasn't quite what I was expecting to write, but once the question occurred to me I couldn't leave it alone.





	ghostie girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vita_sine_fantasy_mors_est](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vita_sine_fantasy_mors_est/gifts).



It had started just before she arrived, and you wouldn’t expect someone from Nonsense to thrive, on noticing things that would quite refuse to be anything less than sensible as shoes. Though there was some argument to be made that shoes weren’t any more sensible than lollipops or butterscotch.

Sad to say it was an argument no one had ever taken her up on. But it had started, and it was a touch of somewhere else even if it was someone else’s somwhere, and so she’d paid attention, oh yes. People whose worlds hadn’t given them up, but sent them back, always had that clinging aura of their home about them.

Like it or not, and she liked it a lot, it was as close to home as she was ever likely to get. But _ghosts_? Oh no, this wasn’t close to her home at all, this was a whisper of heartache and fall and halls that had never seen the sun. So the question was where were they coming from? 

Which was something she found out soon enough, when her new roommate came in trailing shadows of lust of which she seemed perfectly unaware. And then the stupid girl lashed about her _hair_ , as if she didn’t notice them at all! What had they taught her in those Halls? Sumi wondered, but didn’t intend to ask. There was rarely a thing more boring than that, and she knew someone better equipped to find out. 

* * *

She hadn’t really thought about the ghosts in a long, long time, and when she first came to the school, everything had happened far too quickly for her to learn what had first caught Sumi’s attention. It had never really occured to her to ask, after all. 

And then one day at dinner, Christopher asked her if it bothered her to have the ghosts about, and she _froze._ Right there in the middle of the table, as she’d been lifting her pomegranate juice, and a few people stopped themselves to stare. Not for long though, and when Kade reached over to shove Christopher’s head, she breathed and eased out of it. Carefully, as if the words would draw their attention, she asked, “Can you see them?” 

“Yeah, sort of.” Christopher shrugged. “Wierd wispy things, like outlines of people that fade in and out. Sometimes they’ll be nearly filled in, and then, whenever you do the statue thing, they vanish.” He was tapping his flute as he spoke, but spun it on the word vanish.

She breathed out a too-loud sigh of relief, and Kade’s eyebrows rose. “Is that why you do the statue thing? To hide from the ghosts?” 

“It was, at first. They were... I don’t see them here, I suppose because the rules are different? But in the Halls of the Dead, ghosts were people who hadn’t earned a place. Without a place, you can’t keep your body, and you slowly fade into nothing.”

“Okay, that’s just wrong. What could a person do to deserve that?” Christopher asked.

“I don’t think you want to know.” Nancy told him, thinking back to some of the stories that servants of her Lord had told. “But it was one of the rules, and the only way a ghost could keep from fading was by draining one of the living. But there weren’t that many there, so I suppose I stood out until I learned how not to.” 

Kade and Christopher exchanged a glance, but Kade’s expression held more understanding than confusion. “And that’s how you got his attention, the Lord of the Dead?” 

“A lost mortal girl, still enough to hide from ghosts.” She smiled sadly, rolling a grape across her plate. “I got the Lady of Shadows attention first. Some of her servants were out hunting for a feast, and nearly didn’t see me. Well, that might not have mattered if they hadn’t realized I was mortal before they left. The dead being still enough to escape their notice is more to avoid being annoyed.”

Kade choked on a laugh, which made it his turn to be shoved as Christopher cut in. “Seriously, what kind of conversation do you imagine vengeful ghosts are interested in?” 

She smiled softly. “A mortal, though... we’re not supposed to be able to do what I can. So they asked me to come to the Halls and meet the Lady of Shadows, and of course I said yes. I’d learned enough by then, wandering the fields and trying to figure things out, to understand what an honor the offer was. But... the ghosts here?” She met Christopher’s eyes, searching for the reflections of the dead, she supposed. “Do they seem angry to you?”

He shook his head, shrugging. “Sad, mostly. Being near you seems to comfort them? I don’t know, I never actually talked to ghosts back home, but I think maybe they want to follow you to your Halls.” 

Kade winced. “Dead and a fading ghost doesn’t sound like an improvement to me. But if they fell under the rules of these Halls of the Dead, maybe they wouldn’t be ghosts anymore?” 

Nancy stared, a little horrified and a little wistful. “I think they wouldn’t. Unless they’d actually done any of the things that earn you that punishment. I can’t believe anyone who’d done any of that would be as.. nice as Christopher described.” Except for her moment of grief over Sumi, she’d never really thought about anyone from this world finding their way to hers.

Except herself.

She surfaced from her moment of reviere to find an almost disturbingly familiar expression on Kade’s face. From the look on Christopher’s when she met his eyes, he had noticed it too. “Kade. Dude. You look like Jack thinking about dissection, do we need to be worried here? Because I can totally do that, and also punch you if you need it.” 

Kade glared at him, deeply unimpressed. “No, you don’t need to be worried. We have no way to find out if that would work, and I wouldn’t experiment on people anyway. Or ghosts. If they can discuss it they are still people.” 

“Of course they are!” 

“The dead are always people.” 

They spoke together, Nancy’s frost and Christopher’s fire, and all Kade could do was hold up his hands. “Alright, alright, I give, it was a stupid thing to say.” 

* * *

And somewhere else, far away but possibly not far enough depending on who you asked, someone else still thought about ghosts. Occasionally, when she didn’t have work to do for Dr. Bleak, she’d even do her own experiments. They didn’t exist here, of that she was fairly certain.

But if they did, maybe someday she could talk to one, and ask it to talk to Nancy. It would be pleasant, to know if she’d ever made it home.

**Author's Note:**

> It wasn't quite what I was expecting to write, but once the question occurred to me I couldn't leave it alone.


End file.
